


Cheers Darlin'

by jimmriarty



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Drunk Bucky Barnes, Jealous Bucky Barnes, M/M, Pining Bucky Barnes, Unrequited Love, this is sad im sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-21
Updated: 2015-09-21
Packaged: 2018-04-22 18:57:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4846631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jimmriarty/pseuds/jimmriarty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While he moves the drink to his lips (again) he can’t help but realize that they are a beautiful couple. It’s a thought that he hates, an objective statement that is in clear contradiction with the jealously he feels in his chest and that takes his breath away. Peggy is beautiful, she has warm soft brown curls that frame a face sweet and strong at the same time, she has red lips and a femininity that is viewed with respect by the men around her. Steve… Well, Steve is Steve. The most beautiful person Bucky has ever met, tall or not. They look like they just came out from a movie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cheers Darlin'

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on this fanart: http://fuckyeahstuckyart.tumblr.com/post/121932363998/faun-songs-me-n-ssejery-cried-over-this-and
> 
> I know that it doesn’t make a lot of sense since that song didn’t exist yet but I love the art so much and I just wanted to write about my mcu otp, soooo…

Alcohol leaves a strong taste on the tip of the tongue and when Bucky finishes his drink in one single gulp the amber liquid burns down his throat and stomach. It doesn’t taste good. It’s a drink without name that hides its lack of flavour with a high alcoholic content, it’s what soldiers call “the liquor of war”: something to swallow to temporarily forget the stench of decomposed flesh and the copper smell of blood that their bodies carry like a tattoo. War never leaves them.

Bucky doesn’t think of friends killed in battle when he quickly empties the second glass. In his mind there is place only for Steve.

Steve that always tries to protect those around him and do the right thing even when he shouldn’t, that took care of his mother even when his cough was so heavy that Bucky began to fear the worst. Steve with a white soul and eyes so clear and full of ideals that Bucky feels unworthy whenever their gazes meet. Steve that, pure and full of hopes, is a ray of sunshine in the grey of the war, the living proof that good people really exist. Steve is stronger than he looks, his candour has never been a synonymous of weakness and fragility, but Bucky has always felt the need to protect him from the world to preserve his beauty. Even if he needs Steve more than the other way round.

The glass is filled for the third time but remains untouched for a few minutes. Bucky’s blue eyes – darker than Steve’s, they are cloudy by alcohol and cynicism – look for the only person capable of occupying his mind in every moment.

He is disappointed when his gaze doesn’t meet the little guy from Brooklyn.

Rationally, Bucky knows that Steve hasn’t changed. The man who is in front of him could be tall and muscular, but under the uniform that tightens all the right places there is the same Steve Rogers that stood up against bullies twice his size and that collected stray cats on the streets – _“We can’t leave him here, Buck! It won’t last two days!”_ – even when he barely had enough for himself and his family. Bucky is sure Steve is the same; he saw in his eyes when he saved him and brought him _home_.

It doesn’t matter if they are in a military camp, “home” for Bucky has always been big blue eyes that somehow manage to look inside him. Home is his memories, home is thinking of sofa cushions thrown on the floor and evenings spent watching Steve’s hand skilful moving on the paper, drawing sketches that Bucky always found beautiful. Home is the nights when their faces are a little too close and Bucky has to look away and move before doing something he will regret. (He buries the desire in the deepest corner of his heart and when he’ll kiss full red lips he will try to not think of another mouth and another body. He’ll fail, like he always does.)

Home is Steve, no matter how.

And yet ... And yet something is out of place. Bucky stares at Steve and all he can see is a person who has been transformed into the symbol of propaganda. Propaganda for that war from which Bucky desperately wanted to keep Steve away.

Bucky clenches his jaw as he reaches out to grab his drink.

On the tip of the tongue alcohol now tastes like failure and it makes him want to laugh and cry at the same time. He failed the only mission he really cared about, he failed to keep Steve with him, he couldn’t protect him. “I could have done more” thinks Bucky and all he can do is look down in a gesture full of shame. He raises his gaze only when Steve’s voice stands higher than the others for a moment.

At his side there is Agent Carter. They aren’t touching and they could look like a simple couple of friends, but their bodies that are a little too close, the small unconscious movements that make the distance between them more and more and insignificant and the furtive glances tell a completely different story. Bucky moves his gaze on Peggy and _oh_ , in that moment every doubt disappears, because it’s obvious that she’s in love with Steve, Bucky can tell it by the way she looks at him.

He saw that look on himself when, walking with Steve, he happened to look at their reflection in the window of a shop.

Bucky bites the inside of his cheek. The metallic taste of blood mingles with alcohol in a mix that makes him want to throw up. It would be easier to accept it if only Peggy was interested in him only because of his body.

While he moves the drink to his lips (again) he can’t help but realize that they are a beautiful couple. It’s a thought that he hates, an objective statement that is in clear contradiction with the jealously he feels in his chest and that takes his breath away. Peggy is beautiful, she has warm soft brown curls that frame a face sweet and strong at the same time, she has red lips and a femininity that is viewed with respect by the men around her. Steve… Well, Steve is Steve. The most beautiful person Bucky has ever met, tall or not. They look like they just came out from a movie.

_Steve isn’t the same anymore. Steve changed because he’s no longer his._

He needs to vent. He needs to scream from the top of his lungs what he feels and in that moment it doesn’t matter if alcohol will do the talking, because all he wants is letting go and making the lump in his throat go away. The following morning he will be miserable and prey to remorse, but now it doesn’t matter. There is a voice in his mind – a voice that belongs to a thousand different people and nobody at the same time – that reminds him that remorse is better than regrets. Bucky’s lips are raised in a bitter smile while he grabs the microphone, snatching it from the hands of one of the soldiers.

Bucky doesn’t have a prepared speech or something he wants to sing. He doesn’t know what to say in the slightest and, when he clears his throat and brings the microphone close to his lips, he just lets the course of his thoughts flow. His gaze doesn’t move from Steve. Not even for a moment.

_“Cheers, darlin’”_ He sings with a slightly slurred voice, lifting his glass in Steve’s direction.

Only then Steve turns and faces him. The moment he sees Bucky his eyes become a little sadder. In them Bucky reads a disappointment that doesn’t exist.

_“Here's to you and your lover”_ He almost spits out the last word.

The anger in his voice isn’t for Peggy – Bucky could be jealous and drunk, but he could never hate someone capable of bringing genuine smiles on Steve’s face – but rather for himself. The smile on his lips doesn’t reach his eyes.

Around him no man seems to understand. The soldiers that aren’t talking to each other and are paying attention to that little show encourage him every now and then. Steve has a weird expression on his face, a mixture of confusion and something else that Bucky can’t decipher but that he knows isn’t awareness. Peggy however is a different matter. Their eyes meet for the first time and in that exact moment Bucky realizes that she knows what he finds hard to admit even to himself.

Eye contact is difficult to maintain. Looking at Peggy is like looking in a mirror and if there is something that Bucky has always sucked at is accepting his own feelings. He drinks only to have an excuse to don’t look at her. It doesn’t take long until someone refills the glass again.

_“I got years to wait around for you”_  His gaze moves on Steve.

Bucky now can’t focus on anything that isn’t his best friend – thinking that they will never be anything more than that it’s a kick in the stomach and Bucky tries to swallow the pain away with another sip. Steve is the centre of his gravity, the person who will always attract him. Steve is his sun and Bucky is nothing but a planet that revolves around him.

_“I've got your wedding bells in my ear”_ He keeps singing and his fingers tighten their grasp around the microphone’s stand shaft.

He was wrong: he doesn’t feel any better.

For some reason all Bucky wants to do is laugh. Or cry. It’s hard making a distinction.

_“You give me three cigarettes to smoke my tears away”_

The only tears he will cry will be in solitude, salty drops that Bucky will scrub with the back of his hand before they could reach his chin.

_“And I die when you mention her name”_

Something in Steve’s face changes. The eyebrows raise, the lips part slightly and his blue eyes are wide open. In response Bucky gives him another of his bitter half-smiles.

Only the night before Steve talked to him about Peggy.

At first everything seemed to be perfect. The starry sky above them was as bright as ever and their faces were so close that Bucky could feel Steve’s hot breath on his skin. Steve looked at him and for a few seconds Bucky could pretend that they were lovers, that the love he could see in his eyes was romantic and that his feelings were completely reciprocated. Bucky stayed silent and simply listened to Steve’s voice, blue eyes moving on his full lips more often than it should happen between best friends.

There was one moment when he even thought of leaning further and filling the gap that he never had the courage to erase.

Then Steve kept talking and the word “Peggy” escaped his lips for the first time.

_“And I lied, I should have kissed you when we were running in the rain”_

He can almost hear the roar of the rain in his ears and the smell of wet asphalt in his nostrils is so vivid that seems real. Bucky can feel his clothes dripping and yet that memory seems to belong to another era. What he’s remembering has the sweet and almostnauseating taste of nostalgia and things that will never happen again.

Steve was breathing hard because of the run and Bucky recalls how his asthma condition worried him to the point that he even considered carrying Steve home bridal style. Before he could give that thought more than a couple of seconds they turned the corner and the front door appeared in front of them.

Bucky remembers pushing Steve against it gently, grateful that they were safe from the rain and that Steve would have stopped shaking soon.  

He remembers laughs dying in unison, muffled by the sound of raindrops on the road. He remembers the way Steve looked at him from the bottom up and that moment when his heart stopped beating because _ohmygod_ now he gets on his toes and kisses me and this is real and I’m the happiest man on the earth. The distance between their lips became smaller and smaller and then… then Bucky abruptly moved away, like Steve burned and the whole situation disgusted him. Only because he thought he heard a familiar voice in the distance.

They never talked about it. Everything was pushed under the carpet like a pile of dust.

Bucky returns to the real world when the point he was staring at moves. Steve approaches him with long steps and before Bucky can really realize it there are two strong hands on his arms. The grip is firm and sweet at the same time.

“Buck.” Steve simply murmurs and in that simple name there are years of unspoken words and unfilled silences.

_“What am I darlin'?”_ He smiles as his voice comes out of his lips, the rhythm of the song now completely gone.

He needs answers. He needs something, because he can’t live in that way anymore, with unspoken questions on his tongue and a heavy weight in his chest.

Steve bites his lower lip. Uncertainty and doubt flash through his clear eyes.

"Not here." He simply says, before nodding to the people around them – _ah right they exist,_ Bucky thinks – and moving to a more private place that has the maximum privacy you can get in a military camp.

Steve gets closer.

It happens so slowly that Bucky thinks they are in a bubble suspended in the air, a little corner of the world where time passes in a different way. They are only a handful of seconds, yet to him they feel like a whole life and with his heart rate impatience also increases. He can’t wait any longer.

Steve is going to kiss him. Steve is going to kiss him and erase that mistake made that rainy day. He’s going to make Bucky’s fantasies true.

Steve's arms  brings him closer and Bucky sighs as he never sighed before.

“Buck…” Steve calls, voice low and soft and Bucky smiles and leans forward.

Then… It happens.

Bucky knows he shouldn’t be surprised – what happened was the most logical conclusion – but when Steve holds him in an embrace he can only be disappointed. Something in chest cracks, making a heart-breaking sound that Bucky knows Steve has heard.  

Neither of them says something when the first tear makes its way on Bucky’s face and lands on Steve’s shoulder.

 

 


End file.
